Of all the witnesses
around the holy manger
perhaps it was the animals
who saw best what lay ahead,
for they had paced the aching roads,
slept in the wet and hungry fields,
known the sharp sting of sticks
and thorns and curses,
endured the constant bruise
of burdens not their own,
the tendency of men to use
and then discard rather than meet
and pay the debt of gratitude.
For them the future also held
the knacker’s rope, the flayers blade,
the tearing of their bodies
for the sparing of the race.
In the shadows of that stable
might it be his warmest welcome
lay within their quiet comprehending gaze?
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